Any place you think has heritage value to North Melbourne within the study area.

The place might be a building, park, tree, landscape, garden, monument, public art or anything you feel might have value to North Melbourne’s cultural heritage and sense of local identity.

We are also interested to know about places that have ongoing connection with existing and recognisable communities or cultural groups. The reason for the connection can be spiritual, religious, cultural, political or derived from common experience.

The City of Melbourne’s current North Melbourne heritage information for the study area is based on a study completed in 1983. The study needs to be reviewed in line with current best practice.

The review includes Aboriginal, shared, and post contact heritage in order to form a holistic understanding of North Melbourne’s transformation over time. It also considers the heritage significance of the resulting physical layout, places and culture.

The current project uses best practice for heritage assessments and will review all places – currently protected and unprotected by the planning scheme – within a defined area of North Melbourne.

The consultants will make recommendations for changes to existing heritage places where required, new proposed heritage places that need protection, and any new precincts.

Community members will be asked to identify places in the study area that they believe have importance to the area’s heritage.

The consultants will research the places suggested by you to see if they meet the threshold for local protection. Places they assess as meeting the threshold will then go through a planning scheme amendment process before they can be added to the Heritage Overlay.

The area is bounded to the north by Flemington Road, to the east by Capel Street, to the south by Victoria Street and to the west by Dryburgh and Melrose Streets.

Areas outside the immediate defined boundary are not included as they have been reviewed by previous heritage studies: City North Heritage Review 2013, Arden Macaulay Heritage Review 2012, Kensington Heritage Review 2013.

The feedback you provide will:

• Bring to our attention any places that need to be investigated for heritage protection in the Melbourne Planning Scheme.
• Add to our knowledge and understanding of existing heritage places, and potentially add information to written documentation on them.
• Build our understanding of the places the community values and why.
• Increase our understanding of what makes North Melbourne distinctive.

We expect to complete our Heritage Review by the end of June 2020. We may contact some participants as part of our research process to find out more about the places and stories that you've highlighted.

We'll seek to protect identified heritage places that meet the threshold in the Melbourne Planning Scheme through a planning scheme amendment.

The planning scheme amendment will provide multiple opportunities for the community to have a detailed look at the heritage study and all of its components, and to comment on the findings and recommendations as part of the process. The timing of the planning scheme amendment has not been determined but is most likely to be in the latter part of 2020.